Unafraid of his critics, whose baseless charges were systematically and comprehensively eviscerated by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley on Breitbart.com last week, Soon wrote, ďI am willing to debate the substance of my research and competing views of climate change with anyone, anytime, anywhere. It is a shame that those who disagree with me resolutely decline all public debate and stoop instead to underhanded and unscientific ad hominem tactics.Ē

A drought from 2006 to 2010 was among the triggers for the current uprising in Syria, according to a new study. And climate models and the observational record suggest that the drought was amplified by a century-long, human-forced warming and drying trend.

"I am under 'investigation,'" professor Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado Boulder posted on his blog Wednesday. The top Democrat on the House Committee on Natural Resources, Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, sent a letter to university President Bruce Benson that asked the school to provide its financial disclosure policies and information on how they apply to Pielke, as well as any drafts and communications involving Pielke's testimony before Congress between Jan. 1, 2007, and Jan. 31, 2015. In 2013, Grijalva explained, Pielke told the Senate that it is "incorrect to associate the increasing costs of disasters with...

In the anti-fracking film Gasland, producer Josh Fox proclaims that the process of extracting previously inaccessible oil and gas from shale pollutes water supplies, increases the incidence of cancer and leads to higher levels of seismic activity, despite ample contrary evidence. This self-proclaimed environmental watchdog and anti-fracking crusader has led extensive efforts to end or prevent fracking throughout the United States by obfuscating the truth and stopping communities from reaping the benefits of America's shale boom. Josh Fox and others like him are uninterested in looking for improvements in fracking technology and safety. Instead they seek to shut down shale...

A solar-power project set to open next month in Nevada has fried 130 birds during tests and will soon join another solar farm in California in avian incineration. If as many birds being burned by solar power farms built in the U.S. were to wash up on our beaches soaked in crude oil from a leaking offshore well, the outrage would be deafening. But as with the wind turbines that now cover acre upon acre of former "pristine" countryside, what amount to avian Cuisinarts slicing and dicing everything that flies, including endangered species, only the crickets are chirping. House Minority...

More than 100 birds have been injured during testing of a new solar power farm. Biologists say 130 birds caught fire mid-air while entering an area of concentrated solar energy created by the 110-megawatt Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project near Tonopah, Nevada. Experts believe the birds may have been attracted by the glow of the farmís tower, but the projectís owners, SolarReserve, say they have found a way to reduce the fatalities. The solar project is close to being completion and is set to go launch next month. Thousands of mirrors focus sunlight onto one central tower to melt salt...

¬ď–ź —É –≤–į—Ā –Ĺ–Ķ–≥—Ä–ĺ–≤ –Ľ–ł–Ĺ—á—É—é—ā¬Ē is a bitter Soviet-era punch line meaning, roughly, ¬ďBut in your country they lynch Negroes.¬Ē There were a million Cold War variations on the joke: The Soviet farm minister meets his U.S. counterpart, who inquires about whether the heroic Soviet farmers are meeting their five-year plans. Asked about each crop in turn, the Soviet minister is forced to sheepishly admit that they are woefully behind on every goal, and then demands: ¬ďBut what about the blacks in the South?¬Ē A U.S. car salesman asks a Soviet counterpart how many months the typical Soviet citizen must...

Cass Sunstein, Obamaís former regulatory ďczarĒ and one of the smartest and most devious thinkers on the left, has a highly revealing Bloomberg column out this week reporting on the results of a study of the way China has attempted indoctrination in its school system. This column and the underlying study (itís an NBER paper, behind a paywall unless you have academic access) are useful as background reading for everyone who is rightly concerned about how Common Core standards will likely become the means of nationalizing a liberal school curriculum. (What? You mean you arenít reassured by the promises from...

I have been asked to mentor a high school student who thinks she wants to be a lawyer. During our initial conversation, we were discussing various practice areas. Since she had also expressed an interest in engineering, I mentioned Oil & Gas Law. Her response was that she wanted to "protect the environment" and wouldn't be interested in that. I sense an educational opportunity here. Can anyone recommend a short article or book written at high school level that will challenge her attitude? Thanks much!

When the temperature dips below freezing, reliable electricity becomes more than a matter of convenience but a matter of life and death. Unfortunately, the reliability of our electric grid is at-risk due to EPA regulations that are shutting down America‚Äôs coal plants.Existing EPA regulations already have led to the scheduled shutdown of nearly 20 percent of the U.S. coal fleet. EPA‚Äôs newest carbon regulations being finalized this summer will lead to even more shutdowns. With coal responsible for generating nearly 40 percent of America‚Äôs electricity, these shutdowns will further strain our nation‚Äôs electricity grid and could leave many Americans in...

While much of the debate over climate change surrounds whether or not it is occurring, one glaciologist and retired professor says the real issue is that the topic is being used as a political pawn to siphon money and votes. Dr. Terry Hughes, in an interview with The College Fix, said researchers want to keep federal funding for climate change alive, and politicians want to earn environmentalist votes, and both predict global pandemonium to that end. Hughes, a professor emeritus of earth sciences and climate change at the University of Maine, said for years his colleagues urged him to be...

Although man-made global warming has been thoroughly exposed as an embarrassing scam, the green movement is strangely expanding, not retreating. A member of Congress privately told me this is because the green movement is completely driven by money, not idealism. The rhetoric about saving the earth is nothing more than propaganda to pad the pockets of the one percent at the top who are profiting from it. Last year, a committee in the U.S. Senate conducted an investigation and discovered that a handful of radical left-wing billionaires, millionaires and their foundations are behind the green movement. Contrary to the misperception...

Pope Francis continues his groundbreaking progressive approach to Catholicism with plans to expand next year on one of his favorite causes: climate change and protecting the environment. The pope is expected to make climate change a large part of his leadership efforts throughout 2015, according to ThinkProgress.org, using the papacy to encourage the 1.2 billion Catholics to protect the environment as ‚ÄúGod‚Äôs creation.‚ÄĚ Pope Francis has even gone as far as to call the destruction of the rainforest a sin, and cautioned Catholics and non-Catholics alike that protecting the environment is a sacred matter, going as far as back as...

Despite environmentalistsí worries, cattle donít guzzle water or cause hungeróand can help fight climate change People who advocate eating less beef often argue that producing it hurts the environment. Cattle, we are told, have an outsize ecological footprint: They guzzle water, trample plants and soils, and consume precious grains that should be nourishing hungry humans. Lately, critics have blamed bovine burps, flatulence and even breath for climate change. As a longtime vegetarian and environmental lawyer, I once bought into these claims. But now, after more than a decade of living and working in the businessómy husband, Bill, founded Niman Ranch...

Representatives from the U.S. and 195 other countries are meeting in Lima, Peru for the 20th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, hoping to lay the foundation for a major treaty to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. But evidence shows this is the wrong approach to address climate change and negotiators would be better off focusing on market competition and innovation, which have proven able to reduce emissions intensity and promote economic growth. The U.S. is seeking an agreement based on voluntary reductions in carbon dioxide emissions by each nation. In an attempt...

After weeks of promising bipartisanship and refusing to make policy announcements that might rile Democratic lawmakers, Maryland Gov.-elect Larry Hogan has picked his first political fight, coming out swinging against environmentalists and their powerful allies in the General Assembly. Mr. Hogan vowed Monday to roll back proposed new regulations that would limit phosphorus runoff from farms, siding with Eastern Shore farmers who rely on phosphorus-rich chicken manure for fertilizer and against environmentalists who blame it for choking the life out of the Chesapeake Bay. The regulation, known as the ďphosphorus management tool,Ē or PMT, has been hotly debated in the...

On the rim of the Grand Canyon, there is an area that is not part of Grand Canyon National Park. This land does not belong to the federal government. It belongs to the Navaho people. The Navaho tribe, as such, has the right to develop its tribal land to bring tourism, money, and jobs to its population. But this kind of thing gives out-of-town environmentalists and the government employees who run the park a sad. The New York Times article on a proposed $1 billion development actually features quite a few viewpoints, mostly fairly, but it frames the whole...

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA Ė An unusual marriage took place on Sunday in BogotŠ. Dressed in a white suit and a red tie, Richard Torres, a young environmentalist from Peru, sealed his love for a tree in a symbolic act meant to emphasize the importance of preserving nature. "I declare you life partners and forever in pure love, on behalf of the elements of nature and of God " said Colombian actress Kristina Lilley, who performed the ceremony on Bogota's National Park. The participants, some with musical instruments in hand, threw rice at the newlyweds and demanded in chorus: " Kiss, kiss,...

Liberal environmentalists are spending a rainy Monday morning in Washington protesting outside the Capitol Hill townhouse of Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu over the Keystone XL oil pipeline. According to a source on the scene Monday, protesters are standing in the yard of Landrieuís East Capitol Street home holding signs opposing the pipeline. Protesters also brought along a mock black plastic pipeline. The source said Capitol Police and D.C. Metro Police are on the scene, but appear to be letting the protesters stand in Landrieuís yard anyway.

America is on the verge of energy independence. We now pump as much oil as Saudi Arabia. Investments in new technologies are paying off, buoying our economy with new jobs and lower energy prices. What's not to like? Well plenty, if you are an activist who takes your lead from an organization called 350.org that wants to end the use of oil, gas and coal. The "350" comes from the group's goal of reducing the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere from its present level of 400 parts per million to 350. Its unclear what good such a...

The Green movement was the last segment of German Society to admit its complicity with National Socialism and the horrors of the holocaust. While countless historical books have decried the industrial nature of the holocaust, such works fail to explain the motive behind the greatest crime of the 20th century. The Nazi economy and its industry were merely the means by which the holocaust was implemented and paid for. ďNazi OaksĒ describes the anti-Semitic historical background of the early German green movement in the 1800ís that was later absorbed by National Socialism under the biological umbrella of Ďscientificí Social Darwinism....

From Greenpeaceís ďSave the ArcticĒ page. COPENHAGEN ó Danish toy maker Lego said Thursday it wonít renew a deal allowing Shell to hand out Lego sets at its gas stations in some 30 countries, following a viral campaign protesting Arctic drilling. Environmental activists Greenpeace launched in July a video showing an Arctic landscape with a Shell drilling platform made of Lego bricks covered in oil. Lego CEO Joergen Vig Knudstorp said the protest ďmay have created misunderstandings among our stakeholders,Ē adding the company didnít want to be embroiled in the environmental campaign. The worldís largest toy maker ďshould never...

Climate change captured the nationís attention over the past week as an estimated 400,000 people marched through the streets of New York City to raise a collective voice of alarm about the effects of a warming planet. Just days before the march, the issue got a spotlight in Flagstaff thanks to a visit from Katharine Hayhoe, an evangelical Christian and climate scientist who is becoming one of the rising stars in the climate change conversation. Her message about the harmony between faith and climate change earned her a spot on Time magazineís list of the 100 most influential people in...

Anyone who has followed the debate over climate change in recent years has probably noted the seemingly religious fervor with which the pro-alarmist crowd approaches the subject. Opposition to the environmentalist agenda of deindustrialization is not just viewed as wrong policy, but the rankest heresy. To deny that man-made global warming is going to destroy the Earth is tantamount to spitting upon the holy scriptures of the "green" faith. Opposition is not just misinformed or wrong-headed, but is actually sinful and evil, unholiness that cannot be allowed to continue by the Disciples of Gaia. So it is in this context...

PALM SPRINGS Ė With giant windmills rotating behind her Tuesday, U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced a sweeping land-use plan for energy development in Californiaís deserts that seemed more like a promise than a strategy. :snip: The plan is a state-federal collaboration five years in the making, she said. It encompasses some 22.5 million acres mostly in Imperial, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. It will create energy zones for large-scale solar, wind and geothermal projects on land considered of little importance to wildlife and other natural resources. These zones will be home to the projects that help the U.S. combat...

On Friday, the California State Assembly outdid itself. You can always count on the leftist leaders of what is supposed to be the ďpeopleís houseĒ never lets a crisis go to waste. With the passage of AB 1739 (Dickinson-D), SB 1168 (Pavley-D), and SB 1319 (Pavley-D), 100 years of history was reversed. The authors painted a grim picture of Californiaís groundwater future. Most of what they said is true. The only problem they didnít bother to tell you two key truths: 1.It was these same so-called leaders who give up our seatóthe property owner and the farmerís place at the...

Environmentalist groups accuse hog farms of violating civil rights. Environmental groups have filed a civil-rights complaint against hog farmers in North Carolina, claiming that by maintaining farms near neighborhoods where minorities live, the pork producers are engaged in illegal discrimination against minorities. The 48-page complaint explains that the farms create problems for surrounding neighborhoods such as foul smells and runoff in the water. The crux of the complaint, which was filed by Washington-based EarthJustice and three other environmental groups in the Tar Heel State, is not these problems themselves, however. The four environmental groups object to seeing these problems occur...

Journalist James O'Keefe recently tricked actors Ed Begley Jr. and Mariel Hemingway into accepting fake Middle Eastern money to help fund an anti-fracking film in Hollywood. Neither Begley or Hemingway knew they were being duped and secretly filmed. Both actors agreed to hide the fact that their film would be funded by Middle Eastern interests. O'Keefe also captured Hollywood producers explaining methods of hiding the funding, referring to various ďnon-profit groupsĒ that would help keep Middle Eastern funding under wraps. The full undercover video can be watched right here. The idea that Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia would invest...

This week, 68,000 revelers will descend on Nevada's remote Black Rock Desert. (That is, assuming the rain lets up.) They will travel from Los Angeles, London, Melbourne, Mexico City and places you've never heard of. They will take part in the temporary city that is Burning Man, and will light a giant wooden man aflame. Despite all of this, Burning Man has somehow gotten a reputation as a "green" event. But that is simply not the case. Make no mistake: Burning Man is bad for the environment.

Between 1989 and 2010, Congress rejected nearly 700 cap-tax-and-trade and similar bills that their proponents claimed would control Earthís perpetually fickle climate and weather. So even as real world crises erupt, President Obama is using executive fiats and regulations to impose his anti-hydrocarbon agenda, slash Americaís fossil fuel use, bankrupt coal and utility companies, make electricity prices skyrocket, and ďfundamentally transformĒ our economic, social, legal and constitutional system. Citing climate concerns, he has refused to permit construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, and blocked or delayed Alaskan, western state and offshore oil and gas leasing and drilling. Heís proud that...

Charlie Crist flew in a private jet from Tampa to Tallahassee to hold a press conference about the importance of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Ironically, the private jet Crist used for his climate presser is owned by James Finch, who has repeatedly been forced to pay fines to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection for unlawful pollution. Finchís company paid fines for unlawfully polluting water in the Gulf of Mexico near Apalachicola Bay and the Apalachicola National Forest. Crist has recently criticized a new initiative by Scott to spend $1 billion to improve water quality in the state, with a...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry paid a visit Wednesday to the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific, where he met the tiny nationís leaders and commemorated the ferocious World War II battles fought on Guadalcanal. Kerry met with Solomonís Prime Minister Gordon Lilo and Governor General Frank Kabui to discuss sustainable development, ocean preservation and how the islandsí 600,000 residents are coping with the effects of climate change. Ö

The 2014 US-Africa Leaders Summit hosted by President Obama this past week brought together the largest-ever gathering of African government officials in Washington, DC. They discussed ways to bolster trade and investment by American companies on a continent where a billion people Ė including 200 million aged 15 to 24 Ė are becoming wealthier and better educated. They have steadily rising expectations and recognize the pressing need to create jobs, improve security, reduce corruption, and control diseases like Ebola, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. They also understand that better roads and air transportation, improved agriculture and nutrition, and far more energy...

When Ideology Trumps Science: Neil deGrasse Tyson and Cosmos on Global Warming Jay W. Richards August 6, 2014 1:15 PM | Permalink I finally had a chance to watch the twelfth, penultimate episode of Cosmos, "The World Set Free." I was out of the country in June when it originally aired, but since there's no doubt the series is headed into the schools and remains relevant, I'll take this opportunity to comment. The episode stands out from most previous installments. Just when we've grown accustomed to circuitous narrative threads with obscure segues from one topic to the next, we get...

Itís undeniable that most, if not all, Americans want to preserve and protect the environment. No one truly wants to live in squalor or breathe in dirty air. No one truly intends to destroy nature or kill all wildlife. No one truly desires to harm the planet. Modern-day environmentalism is perceived as a benign, ďhipĒ cause. All the celebrities are doing it, so it must be greatóright? On the surface ďgoing greenĒ seems harmless. Weíre told that ďgoing greenĒ will absolve us for our supposed transgressions against the environment. Certainly Mother Earth will forgive us for developing our beautiful planet...

A group called Fossil Free UC wants regents to divest the University of California's endowment fund of all fossil fuel holdings. "As one of the leading public institutions in the world, we have the privilege and the responsibility to take action where we can influence change," Fossil Free UC explains on its website. This is the global-warming movement at its most honest. Its goal is not change, which requires sacrifice in a plugged-in age; its goal is to "influence change" -- to wit, wag a finger at others and demand they do something symbolic and politically correct. What better...

Big Government: The EPA is now claiming the authority to bypass courts and, on its own, garnish the paychecks and attach the assets of those it accuses of violating its rules. And, as with the IRS, its hard drives also crash. The Environmental Protection Agency's insatiable lust for power has now gone beyond being the pen and the phone for President Obama's climate change, bypassing both the Constitution and the Congress in enacting rules and regulations that the American people and their representatives did not enact or even support. Through an announcement in the Federal Register, the agency is claiming...

Fossil fuel and insurance company executives ďcould face personal liability for funding climate denialism and opposing policies to fight climate change,Ē Greenpeace recently warned several corporations. In a letter co-signed by WWF International and the Center for International Environmental Law, the Rainbow Warriors ($155 million in 2013 global income) suggested that legal action might be possible. Meanwhile, the WWF ($927 million in 2013 global income) filed a formal complaint against Peabody Energy for ďmisleading readersĒ in advertisements that say coal-based electricity can improve lives in developing countries. The ads are not ďdecent, honest and veracious,Ē as required by Belgian law,...

ix members of the Climate Summer 2014 Team Western Mass. have been bicycling across the state and will be at the farmers' market here Thursday (July 3) to highlight concerns about the proposed expansion of the Tennessee Gas Pipeline. The expansion of the pipeline in the Northeastern United States is believed to include a route through Franklin County, though a company spokesman said routes haven't been finalized and the company is committed to public safety and protection of the environment. Tennessee Gas Pipeline is part of the Kinder-Morgan company of Houston, Texas. The proposed mainline route of the company's Northeast...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) A coalition of environmental groups is going after Iowa state Sen. Joni Ernst (R), tying her to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) and Charles and David Koch in a new ad. The League of Conservation Voters, Sierra Club and Environmental Defense Fund are backing the spot, part of a planned $1 million push to help elect Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa) to the Senate. The ad features footage of Palin's endorsement of Ernst during the primary, before attacking Ernst for her calls to shut down the Department of Education and abolish the Environmental Protection Agency. "That's why extremist Sarah...

The head of a leading environmental group recently defended job losses from the Obama administration's new anti-carbon regulations as "collateral damage" in the fight against global warming. Joseph Schumpeter must be turning over in his grave. Writing in the Huffington Post, William Becker of the Climate Action Project praised the new Environmental Protection Agency regulations to stop climate change, and wrote that "there is nothing explicit in the (Obama) plan to mitigate or adapt to the economic disruption the clean energy transition will cause for coal and oil-country families." These families thrown out of work, he said, are an "evolutionary...

Climate modelers and disaster proponents remind me of four guys who were marooned on an island, after their plane went down. The engineer began drawing plans for a boat; the lumberjack cut trees to build it; the pilot plotted a course to the nearest known civilization. But the economist just sat there. The exasperated workers asked him why he wasnít helping. ďI donít see the problem,Ē he replied. ďWhy canít we just assume we have a boat, and simply leave?Ē In the case of climate change, those making the assumptions demand that we act immediately to avert planetary crises based...

The sky is always falling. If the new ice age doesnít do us in, the ozone hole will. The instant DDT is banned, aerosols must follow. Global warming is replaced by climate change is replaced by ďglobal weirding.Ē And what is the solution to these often-contradictory scenarios? We anachronists who retain a bias toward the hard sciences would employ very different measures to prevent a freezing ocean and a boiling one. To an engineer, soldier or plumber, this is obvious. But how do leaders of the environmental left address these opposing doomsdays? By raising taxes, increasing government, impeding capitalism and...

Searching old newspapers is one of my favorite pastimes, and I have tried to use them many times to shed light on current events - or to inform readers about how the past is prologue to our very interesting present-day quandaries. Recently, I came across a syndicated column from November 1979 that seemed to point 30 years into the future toward an obscure campaign issue that arose briefly in the 2008 presidential campaign. Though by no means definitive, it provides an interesting insight, at least, into how Chicago politics intersected with the black power movement and Middle Eastern money at...

Can Opinion Turn Against Not-So-Jolly Green Giant?How much of a toll on the American economy does the green movement have to charge before Americans start to wake up to the dastardliness of radical environmentalism? Last month we saw firsthand one impact of Big Green on our economy with the White House announcement that the Keystone XL pipeline won't be built for at least six more months. Ten thousand blue collar jobs, almost all paying more than $50,000 a year, down the drain. It's a project that polls show almost all Americans want, except for the deep-pocketed green elite in Hollywood,...

Early in the morning, while most are still sleeping, groups of elderly Chinese women spread out across city streets. They tear open trash bags, pick through the litter and sort out bottles and cans that come with a deposit. And then they bring them to the local supermarket to a machine that scans and evaluates each can, accepting and rejecting them one by one, and finally printing out a receipt. The interaction between the elderly immigrant who speaks broken English or the homeless man who is barely holding it together... and the machine is a stark contrast between what the...

It‚Äôs time for a little Koch Brothers jiu-jitsu on the left, in particular former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. Over at MoveOn.org, Reich has launched a petition for people to sign to publicly ‚Äúdenounce‚Äô and ‚Äúcondemn‚ÄĚ the Koch Brothers for making their legal political donations. ¬†As Bookworm put it, So far, 202,240¬†people have signed a document that could easily have come from the revolutionaries in China during Mao‚Äôs deadly Cultural Revolution (Nien Cheng‚Äôs¬†Life and Death in Shanghai¬†vividly illustrates that terrible time); or from the Kremlin during the height of Soviet Kangaroo trials; or from East Germany‚Äôs Stasi state (see, e.g, the...

Look for a Climate Credit from the State of California on Your April Utility Bill This month your electricity bill will include a credit identified as the "California Climate Credit." Twice a year, in April and October, your household and millions of others throughout the state will receive this credit on your electricity bills. The Climate Credit is a payment to Californians from a program designed to fight climate change by limiting the amount of greenhouse gas pollution that our largest industries put into the atmosphere. This program is one of many developed as a result of landmark legislation called...

About 80 people showed up at a meeting in Aspen on Thursday on whether the BLM should void 65 oil and gas leases in the region, including 25 in the Thompson Divide area. Two-thirds of the way through the meeting in the basement of the Pitkin County Library, every person who had spoke urged the 13 BLM officials in attendance to cancel the leases, which were first authorized in a 1993 environmental impact statement. ďWeíre very much in favor of voiding the leases, specifically within the Thompson Divide area,Ē said Rob Ittner, the chair of the Pitkin County Board of...